Custom hooks in React are useful when you want to extract and reuse stateful logic across multiple components. While built-in React hooks like useState, useEffect, and useContext cover many common scenarios, there are cases where creating custom hooks can enhance code organization, readability, and reusability.
When to Choose for Custom Hooks in React:
- Complex Logic Extraction: If your component has complex logic that involves multiple states, side effects, and computations, extracting that logic into a custom hook can make your component code cleaner and more maintainable.
- Reusability Across Components: When you find yourself duplicating code or logic across different components, consider creating a custom hook. This allows you to encapsulate the logic in one place and reuse it in various parts of your application.
- Abstraction of Concerns: If you want to abstract away certain concerns, such as handling forms, managing timers, or interfacing with external APIs, into a reusable unit, a custom hook provides a way to encapsulate that functionality.
- Improving Testability: Custom hooks can improve the testability of your code. By isolating specific functionality in a custom hook, you can write tests for that hook independently of the components using it.
- Avoiding Prop Drilling: If you find yourself passing down the same state and functions through multiple levels of component hierarchy, a custom hook can help by centralizing the logic and reducing prop drilling.
- Encapsulation of Side Effects: If you have side effects (e.g., data fetching, subscriptions, or interactions with external services), placing them in a custom hook allows you to encapsulate and manage those side effects separately from your components.